jomo wrote:I'm sorry to say that NewGround Jam period is too short for a semester, and too early for the semester after summer vacation. Since you put the words so firmly like, me and my colleagues can see Scirra's determination clearly. We are sorry to say that we won't invest on C3 education programs, and we will help our customer schools to migrate to other 2D engines in order to avoid the termination of C2.

Older engines never had layers. They are just a convenience. You can make 1000s of layers on one layer using the engine z stacking or even have your own dynamic z sorting in 2 events ....but I suppose you prefer to teach your students defeatism instead of ingenuity.

NetOne wrote:You can make 1000s of layers on one layer using the engine z stacking

Well, in the free version you don't have the Z-Order bar, which makes the ordering an utter nightmare.While I don't feel much restrained by the restriction on the number of events for my C3 introduction classes, it's almost impossible to get by with only two layers. 4 layers would be enough to create some very basic stuff, but hardly enough to create a comercial product. So this might be the sweet spot for Scirra.My 2 cents.

You don't need layers for simple sorting or UI. The main purpose of them is layer effects. It would be wise to teach your students how to work around the limit, it would help expand their mind and show them that's there's multiple solutions to a problem.

I fully get that we experienced developers can hack our way around the layer limitation. However, the main purpose of our classes is to give the young students a very basic introduction into game development, not a crash course in how to circumvent artificial limits. But I won't enter into arguments about this. What is efficient for the thousands of our students might not work elsewhere. Fact is that C2 was a perfect match for *our* past courses and using it an absolute no-brainer. With C3 this is not true anymore, and *only* because of the lack of layers.While I hope that Construct keeps being the perfect tool to hook up young people into game development without having to spend upfront, I know after three decades in the software business that nothing stays forever, and sometimes a loved one pivots into another direction. That's live. But it's always worth trying to make him stay

Is there a reason for switching from C2 to C3 besides "It's newer" ? C2 will still work well for your courses unless you really need that cross platform support.

I agree that the 2 layer limit is arbitrary. It's just there as a trap for absolute beginners, to incentivize them to subscribe so they can create a HUD without thinking. With so many free engines these days it just feels TOO restrictive though. The "free" version of construct 3 is basically a demo, it's not usable compared to other free engines.

Davioware wrote:Is there a reason for switching from C2 to C3 besides "It's newer" ?

Yes, in fact, I considered staying with C2. There are mainly three reasons why I prefer to switch now to a permanent solution. First, I have to redo the course material right now anyway (for other reasons), and it's time consuming to rewrite and re-record the videos from the scratch. I don't want to do this again in Dezember. Second, our students (most from rural areas) go to the next small city where they access the courses in public computer laboratories. The hosted C3 model takes a lot of installation headache away from us. Third, I find the C3 interface somewhat cleaner and more logical, which greatly helps when dealing with absolute beginners.

Davioware wrote:With so many free engines these days it just feels TOO restrictive though. The "free" version of construct 3 is basically a demo, it's not usable compared to other free engines.

jomo wrote:I'm sorry to say that NewGround Jam period is too short for a semester, and too early for the semester after summer vacation. Since you put the words so firmly like, me and my colleagues can see Scirra's determination clearly. We are sorry to say that we won't invest on C3 education programs, and we will help our customer schools to migrate to other 2D engines in order to avoid the termination of C2.

Older engines never had layers. They are just a convenience. You can make 1000s of layers on one layer using the engine z stacking or even have your own dynamic z sorting in 2 events ....but I suppose you prefer to teach your students defeatism instead of ingenuity.

Everything in the class is for convenient comparing using DirectX or OpenGL to make a game. Of course, I can teach student how to make a engine from a blank file, and compile it to get a native binary.

@jomo this is why for education there is an education licence model. this was not designed to be free software so why complain when its not?, yes that specific tutorial needs to be updated for C3 so as to be complete fully as the tutorial is written but if you are writting you're own classes then this is something you could pick up on yourself and modify it before you present it to your class. And to say you must be this qualified to talk to you is not going to get you any more help it will just alienate you from everybody. Plenty of people here have put games on the play store añd being mostly an english community that is a bad example as we cant even tell if there is actually any gameplay there.

@TiradentesI can understand your frustration, but you might as well stay with C2 on a memory stick (no installation required) or go with GDevelop. Even Construct Classic looks like an Ok solution to teach the basics of game programing.

More or less, all these programs have similar interfaces so you don't have to redo your documentation.